Player name: Andrew Kerr
Membership number: UK0105-1079

Approval Item Requested: Venue Style Sheet
Approval Level: High
Source Book and Page: N/A

Brief Description of the Item

This might be easier to read on the wiki: changeling.cam-wiki.org/index.php/Edinburgh_VSS

Part 1: Basic Information
Domain Edinburgh - Live-Action
Venue Changeling: the Lost
Venue Storyteller Andrew Kerr
Storyteller Contact Edinburgh VST
Game Times TBD

Part 2: Styles of Play

The categories are rated using the 1-5 scale below:
Style of Play Description Rating
Action Combat and Challenges 2
Character Development Personal dilemmas and choices 4
Darkness PC death or corruption 4
Drama Ceremony and grand story 2
Intrigue Politics and negotiation 3
Manners Social etiquette and peer pressure 3
Mystery Enigmas and investigation 4
Pace How fast do stories emerge, develop, and resolve? 2

Rating Description
1 Never present
2 Sometimes present
3 Often present
4 Usually present
5 Always present

Part 3: Description of Venue

Edinburgh is a mad god's dream
~ Hugh MacDiarmid

Changeling: the Lost is a game about people torn away from what they once knew... and changed in ways of which they had not previously dreamt. Changelings were all deprived of their home and their old way of life, and all have been forced to doubt every part of what it was that made themselves who they had thought they were.

Player characters are individuals who possessed the strength of will and spirit to survive the loss of their previous existence, then endure their time in bondage to a being both alien and terrifyingly powerful. They won back through the Hedge from Arcadia, and thereafter coped - if only barely - with the shock of just how different their nature and the world they once knew had become.

The greatest horror in a character's life lies in his past, in the twisting or destruction of all that he once was, and all he once held to be his own. Every character knows that he has quite literally lived through nightmares and survived... though not unscathed. The greatest fear lies in the future, with the threat of the Others snatching away this hard-won freedom to rebuild oneself. The greatest challenges lie in preserving one's liberty... and in discovering, building, or perhaps stealing an identity that can stand up to the rigours of the world and the wiles of the fae.

Though there will be physical danger and perhaps even death in the game, the most important conflicts should lie within the hearts and minds of the characters themselves.

Mood and Atmosphere

... a labyrinth without beginning or end, always filled with new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal ...
~ Pierre Boulez

Shadows and tones of grey. Changelings stand between the daylight of the mundane world and the witch-light of Arcadia. "Reality" seemingly cannot deal with them and seeks to hide them from view, and Faerie will destroy them if it can. Caught between worlds, their situation is epitomised by the truth perpetually told by their own shadows, yet never seen by mortals.

In a life of dreams made flesh and flesh turned to magic, where can true reality be found and depended upon? What counts as heroism or villainy, and how far can one explore one's new self without losing oneself entirely?

History

A thousand years ago, so the story-tellers claim, the Border Tribe went to war against the Others. The Tribe were punished by the True Fae, but some have said that it was Scotland that truly lost.

Whatever transpired in that conflict turned the Tribe into the Reavers, and left a great mass of them in Scotland. Ten centuries have passed since the war, and the numbers of the Reavers have fallen away - as have their culture and organisation, if one believes the old tales of their beauty and prowess.

But throughout that time, they have been bound to the Hedge, and have sought to make it their own. The once-vibrant freeholds of Scotland have fallen one by one, most of the surviving Lost fleeing the cities to find safety in other lands, or to join the raiding clans who fight the Reavers on their own terms.

The one city never over-run is Edinburgh. Warded by the peculiar local Hedge phenomenon known as the Maze, its heart is guarded from Reavers and Others by a warped and shifting tangle of tunnels and pathways. Though dangers aplenty stalk the shadowed halls, no organised enemy has ever been known to pass safely through the Maze.

Tending to see themselves as a bastion of order amidst a spreading sea of chaos, Edinburgh's Lost governments have long had a name for attempting to do things the right way. In particular, the cycle of seasons has been observed with barely a hitch for centuries.

The presence of mortal royal and legal courts, institutions of high finance, political power, and the flowerings of high culture and philosophy helped to ensure that Edinburgh always had a population of the more self-consciously refined mortals and Lost, though the comparatively recent advent of the Festival Fringe and the free-wheeling creativity it promotes have made the city increasingly appealing to less conventional types. Over the last forty or fifty years, the freehold of Edinburgh has been shaken by more than one would-be cultural innovator, and it is not certain how long the placid ways of ancient tradition will survive intact.

Lore:

• The Hedge-Maze: The Old Town of Edinburgh - the portion of the city resting upon the great whale-backed ridge of the Castle Rock - is masked from Arcadia by one of the Hedge's more unusual manifestations. Where much of the rest of Scotland is covered by a Hedge of moorland, ancient forest, and other wilderness, the city of Edinburgh has at its unseen heart a tangle of stone and brick.

The Maze is a world unto itself, its tunnels and wynds stalked by oddities and adapted forms of Hedge-life, and home to legends and myths that often date back far beyond even the fabled time of True Thomas.

Many of these tales suggest that the Maze was a deliberate creation - though whether of some fae lord, the Border Tribe, or members of the Lost few seem able to agree. What is known is that it much of it shifts and changes, whatever laws it obeys making sense to precious few changelings. However, within its halls pockets of stability and comparative safety have always been found, and it has long served as a defence against both Others and Border Reavers.

• The Compass of Night: An artefact of local legend, said by some to be the result of an ancient Contract concluded with powers unknown in the early days of the Maze, and by others to be something more akin to a Will o' the Wisp offering false guidance. Sometimes, those travelling at dusk through the warrens of the Maze are said to find an ancient compass, sealed in a silver case like an antique pocket-watch. It opens to reveal a glimpse of a sky filled with stars, which wheels and turns as the holder changes facing. Supposedly, it permits those who learn its secrets to locate whichever exit from the Maze will take its wielder the shortest time to reach from wherever they then stand. Unfortunately, it does not warn of dangers, nor of the location into which the portal opens. The stories say that the Compass cannot leave the Maze, nor can it hold material form after sunrise, whether or not the sun's rays touch it.

• The Labyrinth of Dreams: Once upon a time, in a place both far away and ever-near, many of the people were frightened and scared. There were evil things stalking the land, and danger seemed to be drawing in around them. Some tried to run away, and were caught by the monsters that lurked in the wilderness. Others took up arms and rode out to fight, and in time became like the monsters themselves, holding territory and hunting like prey those whose paths crossed theirs. Still another group tried to hide, burying themselves in the cities of men in the hope that the common crowds would shield them from notice and harm.

Some others shared a dream, and together they worked to build a defence. With their allies, they sought to build a great labyrinth, a sacred path of walls and wards that the monsters could never pass, at the heart of which their people could remain secure forever more.

But here the tale divides, and becomes a maze - for that is what became of the dream. None now know where the dreamers are, for the labyrinth in which they sought to hide themselves is lost to us. Some say that their plans were flawed, others that they were betrayed from within. Still others that the monsters themselves found the labyrinth before it was complete, and turned it to chaos and confusion. Another tale says that one of the greatest of monsters claimed the centre of the labyrinth for itself, and captured or drove out the dreamers.

But some say that there are still paths and secrets that might be found, ways to find and navigate the labyrinth that they claim lies at the heart of the Maze. Ways to find power, and lore, and secrets... and perhaps even safety.

But that's just a faerie tale, of course.

Part 4: Storytelling Mechanics

Character Creation Guidelines

• Canon: Every player wants to run an interesting character that engages his interest. We respect this, but ask that canon is at most bent, and not broken. People are signing up to play in a game of Changeling: the Lost, and it will be helpful to the game as a whole if characters recognisably fit with the setting.

• Cooperation: Every character should have a story, goals, and ambitions. But this is a group environment, and the goal of the storyteller has to be to make the game as much fun for as many people as possible. Brooding loners and aggressive tyrants who slay any who get in their way are fun to read about or watch on film, but tend to make for poor player characters. Feel free to pursue selfish goals, but take care not to deal in absolutes. If someone beats your character to a coveted court position, find a way to best them in another arena - don't kill them or otherwise render that PC unplayable. Removing someone from play removes all future RP with them, and that is rarely going to be to the betterment of the game as a whole.

• Common Sense: The Storytellers reserve the right to ask players to run a scene "cinematically" - i.e. through role playing rather than with challenges. Similarly, simplified mechanics might be used to swiftly resolve a scene that threatens to hold up the rest of the game, and tabletop mechanics might be used for chapter games.

Visiting Character Guidelines

Though visitors are a welcome addition to the chronicle and can provide a great deal IC and OOC, the local game depends for its survival and success upon local players. As a result, those players who regularly attend the game will be the primary focus of the storytelling team. Locals will certainly not be given privileges to ride roughshod over visitors, but if a conflict arises between what the ST judges to be the interests of the local game and the wishes of a visiting player, there will be only one choice made. Visitors are guests whom we are happy to entertain - but while in our home, we ask that they respect it and its residents.

Proxy Rules

The following excerpt from the Camarilla Addendum, Section 4.0, applies to proxies run in the Edinburgh Changeling venue:

To engage in a proxy, a player must get local Low Approval, as well as informal approval from the supervising Storyteller of the scene into which she proxies. Mid Storytellers may choose to require notifications of any proxies into their areas of responsibility. The player must provide the Storyteller of the scene into which she proxies with her full character sheet, and her character’s motivations and potential actions for whatever situations may develop during the proxy. Storytellers must keep players informed of proxy progress, providing status updates on at least a weekly basis, and should portray proxied PCs to the best of their ability should unforeseen situations arise.

All Character sheets, items and xp logs must be approved by your storyteller before coming to our Venue. Custom items with game mechanics not available in the core books must provide a copy of their approved write-up. Any actions taken by the proxied character are final, as are the consequences of those actions, and players proxy their characters at their own risk.

Character Restrictions

Character Restrictions conform to the guidelines in the Global and Camarilla UK Addenda.

Downtime Scenes

Downtime scenes in Edinburgh will generally be handled by email, however, special arrangements can be made to run scenes face-to-face or by other arrangements, if necessary.
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Travel Risks

The World of Darkness is not a safe place in which to travel, by mundane means, and travelling through the Hedge is dangerous at the best of times. Indeed, with some character concepts being predicated upon the services they provide to would-be travellers, we are keen to ensure that PCs cannnot simply "teleport" at will around the country - let alone the globe. Characters coming from non European Union countries by mundane means will have to deal with Customs and Immigration officials, and should be prepared to explain how they will deal with said, including passports, appropriate visas, and explanations for any restricted items they may be carrying.

Experience Guidelines

The Edinburgh Changeling game conforms to the UK Addendum in regard to XP awards:

If this is your first game of the month, the game awards 4XP.
If this is not your first game, the game awards 2XP.
If you receive an award for "good roleplay", you gain both 1 additional XP and 5 Open prestige.

Downtime Reports grant up to 3XP.

Justification for being granted this Item:

It'd be good to be able to start the game. :)

Players name: Andrew Kerr
Date: 4th October 2007

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